LADS AND GENTLEMEN
Jeremy Thomas discovers posh clubhouses, glorious courses and teeming pubs on a boys’ golfing holiday in Scotland
THE rickshaw-bike ride cost £20, a fine price to pay at 2am for what would have been a shameful few hundred metres’ lurch from Soho to Covent Garden.
We had paid our respects up and down Greek and Wardour streets, done the French House, the Coach & Horses, tipped a trilby to Jeffrey Bernard and Auberon Waugh, jabbered like fools with £3 pints on the pavement because too many other fools had packed the pubs, and now we were ready to move on.
And there draws a film of gauze over the night, memories being what they are for old goats full of vim but past their prime. Eight of us, none younger than 40, gearing up in Blighty before five days golfing in Scotland to fill a few holes in our bucket list.
Sunday morning’s train trip from London to Edinburgh lasted four hours and 41 minutes. Forty- one minutes, mind you: the journey ended precisely when promised.
We had been warned that Edinburgh car-hire companies do not work on Sundays, so we caught a bus to the airport for our two station-wagons. St Andrews was about 90 minutes away, over the mighty Forth Bridge, on the northeast coast.
We based ourselves in a selfcatering house, over the road from a patch of ruins, the seaside, and a pitching wedge away from the ancient St Andrews clubhouse.
The “Auld Grey Toon” might remind you of Grahamstown, complete with yammering students and a packed Nando’s, but its monochrome streets hold a mystic thrall for every golfer in the world — many of whom can be seen enthusiastically sampling a local brew named Bitter & Twisted.
Sadly, the Old Course was ruled out due to a Scottish amateur tournament, but we were booked for two other links on the British majors roster, plus a few surprises.
Not historic but rated by many as the finest links course in the British Isles, Kingsbarns, unique among its peers, gives you a view of the sea from every one of its 18 holes. It is used for both the Alfred Dunhill and Open qualifying rounds. What an experience — curling around rocky coves, rolling among the hills and tussocks as if it has been there for centuries. We liked it so much we played it twice.
The wild card in our deck proved an inspired quirk: Balcomie Links at Crail, home of the oldest golf society in Scotland and designed by no less a luminary than Old Tom Morris in 1895.
Bang in the middle of the week, the weather turned foul. Our caddy gave us some wise counsel: when it’s breezy, swing easy. Nonetheless, countless balls swerved, forever lost, into the heather and gorse. Elevated tees
Our caddy gave us some wise counsel: when it’s breezy, swing easy
are all very well, but not when you’re pounding uphill into a gale that last saw land in Greenland.
Muirfield was furthest from our base, and the two-hour journey gave us lots to think about. After all, it took super-creep Phil Mickelson to master the scary monster and win the 2013 Open. High winds, rock-hard fairways and glassy greens had made his victory the mightiest Major win of the year.
Although the course is approached via a winding coastal road, it lurks on higher land — within a sniff of the sea but high above the dunes. Muirfield is very much a private members’ club, most of whom live outside Scotland and seldom play; Tuesdays and Thursdays are the only days set aside for visitors.
A geezer with a clipboard said we should play off the forward tees, given our handicaps (all around 18) and the course’s toughness. Bad mistake (at least for those who had a decent game). The weather was sunny and mild, turning the links from murderous to mild.
Heresy, I know, but drive-pitchputt is not what we expected, flattering as it was. A word to the wise: play it as close to the tips as the starter will allow. You deserve to do battle with a classic beast, not with its dull cousin.
Muirfield has no pro shop or halfway house. If you want a bottle of water you have to take off your golf shoes, slip on a tie and jacket and buy it from the bar. The snooty air lies thick, but half our party dolled themselves up and stayed for lunch. The rest of us fled what was a little too much like boarding school.
Carnoustie, on the other hand, was a revelation. Although approached via Dundee, a town like Kempton Park in charm, ringed with roundabouts and snorting lorries, the course boasts a posh new clubhouse, cafeteria and chummy pro shop.